2021 Winter Updates
25 June 2021
What a wonderful week of midwinter celebrations! We've reached the mid-point of our Winter. We celebrated with a lovely meal put together by our chef Tom, that celebrated ‘Tastes of Aotearoa’, and included Kapiti Island Paua Fritters and Marlborough Sound King Salmon. It has been over 60 days since the sun was last seen, and we have 55 more to go until we see it again, but we will start to get some twilight back in our days.
Midwinter is a busy time as we share well wishes with all of the Antarctic wintering bases, and continue to get our usual work done as well as planning for next summer.
We have had some wonderful auroras over the last week, and the weather is keeping us on our toes with temperatures have been fluctuating a lot, -16 one day and -35 the next, and winds coming and going.
Until next time,
Kitty
28 May 2021
During May we have been busy with our Winter Works projects, including replacing some garage doors, and getting equipment ready for next season’s science events. The days are getting darker with only a little bit of twilight in the middle of the day as we head towards mid-winter, and the auroras are getting stronger.
In the dark we have kept entertained with a very delayed Burns night celebration, where we shared poetry and a great meal including Haggis, and had some more excellent bagpipe playing from Bruce. Sadly for the moon watchers the cloud came in and so we missed the eclipse, but the we had a fabulous full moon there for a while earlier in the evening.
We are still keeping some fresh fruit and vegetables going from out last flight in March as we head towards midwinter.
28 April 2021
On 24th of April we saw the last sunset that we will witness until August, so Winter is here! We have seen some fabulous stars on the few clear nights, and a few small auroras which has been exciting for those who haven’t seen them before. We have been getting temperatures as low as -47, (-62 with windchill), so we’re keeping an eye out for freezing pipes and rugging up when we go outside.
We have been busy getting tasks done before we completely lose the light, including installing and checking on science equipment, winterising vehicles and getting key maintenance done on the Base and the windfarm.
Our moving ANZAC service was attended by some of our friends over the hill at McMurdo, and our piper Bruce braved the cold to play for the service. Lest we forget.